Product releases and maintenance schedule

Fresco is built and supported by a team of software developers in the Software Solutions group within IT Services. It is built using the Drupal Open Source web content management system, tailored for Oxford University’s use and integrated with various other University systems.

As an Agile team, we aim to bring improvements onstream without unnecessary delay, to add the value of new features, and correct bugs or address security vulnerabilities, as soon as possible. We demonstrated a sustained track record of providing incremental benefits at a regular two-week cadence over 10 years with Oxford Mosaic and are continuing this approach with the Fresco platform.

To do this, we operate routine downtime periods on the Fresco platform. 

Service windows

We currently carry out regular maintenance and updates during our service window on Monday morning, beginning at 09:00. At present, releases typically complete within 3 hours, but, for technical reasons, this cannot be guaranteed. We advise that content editors avoid scheduling any critical content updates to happen at this time. 

In partnership with our hosting suppliers, Acquia, we are working to shorten this release window period. We also have work in hand to improve the notification of maintenance work in progress, to tailor this to specific stacks/sites, so as to narrow the time window over which suspension of editing for any given site is advised.

Occasionally, this service window slot is not available, in which case we may need to release at another time, preferably making use of the standard IT Services’ at-risk window of Tuesday mornings. This may be due to releases for other systems already being queued at the standard time, or upstream or downstream dependencies imposing time constraints on the Fresco window, or critical delivery dates preventing delay until the next vacant slot. 

We aim to make our release window reliable and predictable and our service window commitment will be reviewed when the draft Fresco Service Level Agreement is updated in Michaelmas Term 2026.

Notice

We send out notifications via a post to the FrUG (Fresco User Group) channel for Service announcements in advance of planned maintenance. This is posted as soon as possible in the day two days before, once we are in a position to confirm a release will go ahead.

Exceptionally, notifications are sent out the day before: in these cases, we are making a judgement between the impact on users of not giving fuller notice and the impact of delaying the release.

Frequency

Typically, we make releases every two weeks, with sometimes longer intervals between releases during holiday periods. A record of our releases is maintained in our release notes, which are published following every scheduled release.  

We action a set of automated tests of website functionality and visual display, and also carry out a set of core manual regression tests ahead of each scheduled release. We also manage a deployment pipeline for making releases that minimises the editing downtime required while maintaining proper controls for managing product changes.

In addition, we sometimes have to make emergency releases, to address critical security issues or defects. In these cases, we make the release as soon as we can, but consider less busy periods – the start or end of day, or lunchtime – if appropriate. We post notifications of these releases to the FrUG channel as soon as we can once we have a confirmed plan to release. Wherever possible, we will indicate the reason for an out-of-band release being required. 

Last updated: 9 October 2026